Customer service centers and other customer-oriented businesses have sought ways to increase the productivity of customer service agents or provide products or services to customers through more automated mechanisms. Accordingly, customer-oriented businesses have invested significant resources in developing interactive systems to provide certain services to customers. Such self-service systems permit customers to perform desired tasks, while not requiring the help of a customer service agent. Such interactive systems include interactive voice response (IVR) systems (both dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) and speech recognition), web sites and applications, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, sales force automation (SFA) systems, and kiosks.
Generally, these interactive systems are designed with user interfaces that provide a variety of options and functionality. Unfortunately, there is no effective way of evaluating whether the user interface is designed in the most efficient and advantageous manner. The task is difficult, because each customer or user of the interactive system may be trying to accomplish different goals.
Using the IVR domain as an example, many customer-oriented businesses have implemented IVR technology as a solution to resolve routine customer service tasks, thereby reducing the number of tasks requiring human customer service interaction. Such IVR systems can save significant dollars for customer service centers. IVR systems are capable of handling simple problems while siphoning the more complex customer service calls to live agents. In the late 1990s, many companies began to take advantage of a newer technology—the Internet—to provide an additional self-service option to their customers.
Though many companies have developed self-service web applications, the Gartner Group states that 92% of all customer interactions still take place over the telephone. In fact, customers are three times more likely to call a toll-free 800 number than use self-service web applications. Further, using new technologies such as speech recognition, today's IVR systems have the potential to allow organizations to automate a wide variety of complex customer interaction tasks at a much lower cost than an agent-handled transaction. Despite these advantages, IVR systems have been often ignored in favor of the Internet and outsourced call centers.
Overall, IVR trails all other interactive channels in customer satisfaction levels. This phenomenon is a by-product of many factors, including the fact that users' experiences within the IVR system are virtually invisible and often poorly understood. Additionally, IVR systems must balance ease-of-use with the economic need to allow users to accomplish increasingly complex tasks. To further complicate the situation, there is a greater risk of errors in the system design and programming of IVR system than any other channel.
One significant problem with IVR system efficiency is that when an IVR system does not meet a customer's expectations, he become frustrated and hangs up or “zeros out” to a live agent. Currently, IVR systems must rely on predictors of behavior (e.g. customer demographics, psychographics, purchasing histories) in order to design tasks and experiences that are aligned with user needs. In addition, companies use indicators of behavior (e.g. sales reports, transaction logs, call logs) to make a best guess as to why the IVR is not meeting customers' needs. Companies are not using actual methodology or technology to pinpoint what part of the system needs to be modified, in what way, and why.
A key component to IVR success is to measure how customers use the system and to align these usage patterns with the business objectives for the system. These items can be used to continuously modify and evolve the IVR to maximize cost savings and customer satisfaction. When customers complete their tasks quickly and successfully without having to wait in a queue, they are happier and require the assistance of a live agent less often. The result—if customers are successful in an automated, interactive channel, the company can quickly realize substantial cost savings.
According to Forrester Research, customer satisfaction levels with IVR systems fall in the 10% range, compared with a satisfaction rate of approximately 80% for face-to-face interactions. This is not just a customer relations issue—it's a financial problem.
Consider this conservative example:
A company receives 50,000 customer calls each day.
20% zero out to live agents.
Each live agent call costs $10.
In this example, the company is spending $100,000 each day to have live agents unnecessarily complete simple customer transactions. In many instances, customers are unable to accomplish their task via IVR systems. This could be for one of two reasons. First, they call the IVR with a particular task in mind and the system is not set up to handle that task. Second, the IVR is set up to handle the task, but the customer finds the system difficult to use, confusing or incomplete. The customer then chooses to zero out to a live agent—or worse—ceases to engage with the company altogether.
One reason why so many customers do not find their task options available on the IVR, or have a difficult time using the system even if the task is there, is because companies often fail to take into account three factors when designing an IVR system—business objectives, user objectives and business environment dynamics. A business objective is what the organization wants to accomplish via the IVR system and must be articulated as a user outcome in the IVR. User objectives are what the customers hope to accomplish via the IVR system. These may overlap with the business objectives, but often the user has goals that the IVR designers did not take into account, or chose not to put into the IVR for business reasons. Business environment factors include the competition, market conditions and awareness of market desires. Many times, the data conundrum gets in the way of this alignment. Predictors do not tell companies what users are attempting to do. Business outcomes only show the successes or failures at the end of the user experience. What is missing is a measurement that exposes user goals, needs and wants. Only then can organizations align their business goals with the objectives of their users.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a system and method for monitoring user activity of an interactive system.
Additionally, there is a need in the art for a system and method for providing recommendations to improve an interactive system, based on the analysis of user activity.
Further, there is a need in the art for a system and method for generating reports regarding the analysis of user activity, so that further modifications can be made to the interactive system.
Also, there is a need in the art for a system and method for monitoring user activity of an interactive system, without hindering users from using the interactive system.
Still further, there is a need in the art for a system and method for defining a task as a sequence of steps within the interactive system and for analyzing whether the defined task is being completed properly by users.